Strange Comfort
In a world of great suffering, it’s easy to doubt our struggles matter, but God sees every hurt and comforts his people with purpose.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, ESV).
There is unimaginable suffering in the world. Christians are being persecuted and burned by fire to the point of being unrecognizable. Orphan children are starving and filthy, living on the streets and begging for scraps of food. After witnessing these horrors, it’s understandable to think the problems we face in the West are insignificant. We often feel they are unworthy of God’s attention. However, the moment we measure our suffering against someone else’s, we open the door for the enemy to convince us that our needs don’t matter and that we shouldn’t bring them before God.
Held By God’s Hand
God does not measure or compare our suffering. He cares if we are going through a divorce, unable to pay our bills, or if we receive a cancer diagnosis. We don’t need to experience a global or catastrophic tragedy for God to care deeply about our needs, hurts, and afflictions. We can’t compare ourselves to those we deem worse off. I’ve seen children in an orphanage display more joy than a young man in the United States battling real depression. You don’t need a “third world” struggle to be compassionately cared for by God.
Jesus showed such deep love and sympathy for a boy who was being thrown into the fire by evil spirits (see Mark 9:14-29). At the same time, he was just as compassionate toward Peter, who denied Jesus three times and cried out in deep sorrow (see John 18:15–27; 21:15–19). It would have been misguided for Peter to dismiss his own struggle as insignificant compared to the boy tormented by the evil spirit or to think God had no time for his failure. Jesus does not rank pain or prioritize people based on the severity of the need. He responds with compassion to all.
Many of you are going through a very difficult season. For some, it is from external circumstances: economic problems, a troubled marriage, kids in crisis. For others, it may be emotional distress. You may be discouraged, struggling with doubt, and feeling an overwhelming sense of personal failure. You may even feel unwanted and unloved. Jesus knows; he sees and hears your cry. Scripture says his hand holds you: “For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, do not fear; I will help you” (Isaiah 41:13, NIV). Psalm 68:3 says, “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”
The God of All Comfort
Some may question whether God truly shows compassion or brings comfort. But the real question isn’t if he will comfort; it’s when and what that comfort will look like. The truth is that God’s comfort does not always come in the way we expect or desire.
If we’re facing a divorce, we don’t just want to feel God’s presence; we want the marriage to be restored. We don’t want to walk through the valley of death; we want to be taken out of it altogether. Like Israel in the wilderness, we don’t want comfort in the desert; we want to escape, even if it means going back to the place that once held us in bondage.
Too often, we want comfort more than we want God. Yes, he is the God of comfort, but even more, he is the God who wants our whole heart, our deepest affection, and complete obedience. He knows us better than we know ourselves and is at work in every circumstance for our ultimate good, even when our present suffering feels anything but good.
So how does God comfort? In 2 Corinthians 1:3, we see that he is the father of mercy and the God of all comfort. Not some comfort but all comfort. I have come to call this God’s strange comfort.
With our friends and family, most attempts at comfort are attempts to help us escape the affliction. We often believe that comfort means resolving our issues. Like Job’s “comforters,” we are more about fixing the problem than seeing God as the one “who comforts us in all our affliction.” We’ve been wrongly conditioned to believe that comfort means being freed from our troubles. We think that if the difficulty continues, God hasn’t comforted us at all. Yet true comfort means being present with someone in their pain and suffering. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “the easing or alleviation of a person’s feelings of grief or distress.” Comfort doesn’t remove the situation; it eases the burden, lifting the weight of sorrow.
Purpose in Our Pain
God’s strange comfort is that he doesn’t always remove our affliction, yet he is always present with us in the midst of it. We often think of comfort as the end of our trials and tribulations, but that is really deliverance. God is mighty to save and to bring us out, yet he does so in his way and in his timing. While we remain in our painful season, he is at work within us, and his comfort empowers us to endure. If God allowed affliction to run its course without his presence, we would be undone. The fact that he is present and comes at just the right time sustains us and holds us steady when it feels like everything is falling apart.
Why does God allow us to remain in affliction? As 2 Corinthians 1:4 says, “…so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.” In other words, the Holy Spirit has a purpose in our pain. One reason is to comfort and encourage others who are suffering. But there are other reasons as well: to teach us to trust God, to help us give thanks in all circumstances, to strengthen our faith, and to draw us into deeper, more earnest prayer.
God has many reasons for offering comfort instead of immediate deliverance. We may never fully understand them, but his purpose is always present. He never allows suffering to be random or meaningless. And though we’ve often been led to believe that God does not allow suffering, the Bible makes it clear that he does allow it for a greater purpose.
Even the apostle Paul stated the purpose behind his own suffering: “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). If Paul had not faced those overwhelming trials and pressures, he would never have learned to rely on God and might have continued relying on his own strength.
Trusting God in the Fire
We can try to avoid life’s troubles and despairing circumstances, but if we succeed, we may miss the greatest spiritual lesson in learning to rely on God. If given the choice, would you choose a trouble-free life spent depending entirely on yourself, or a life that includes struggle and despair that teaches you the life lesson of relying on God? Is trusting God worth embracing life’s difficulties? Is enduring hardship worth becoming an unshakable man or woman of God? We willingly go without food to lose weight, push through pain at the gym to grow stronger, and work long hours to earn money. Shouldn’t we be even more willing to endure suffering to become more like Jesus?
“He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again” (2 Corinthians 1:10). This verse is remarkable. Paul endured hardship throughout his life and ministry, yet he writes, “He delivered us.” At the same time, he recognized his ongoing need, saying, “He will deliver us again.” It’s a powerful picture of past, present, and future—past pain, present trials, and future struggles—all met by God’s continual faithfulness.
Why is it so easy to love God and thank him when he takes away our pain, but so hard to worship him when we’re still in the middle of it and he hasn’t delivered us?
My all-time favorite sermon my father preached was called “Right Song, Wrong Side.” He described how, after the Hebrews escaped Egypt, they found themselves at the Red Sea with the Egyptian army closing in behind them. The same people who had just been rejoicing quickly turned to fear and grumbling, saying, in essence, “We wish you had left us in Egypt.” Then God parted the sea, the army was destroyed, and the calamity was averted. On the other side, the people began singing a song of praise and celebration. It was the right song, but on the wrong side. If they had trusted God, they could have sung that same song before the deliverance ever came.
Friend, take comfort that you can praise God even before deliverance arrives, and you can keep praising him, even if it never comes in the way you hoped. Remember the three Hebrew boys who were about to be thrown into the fire for refusing to bow to King Nebuchadnezzar? They said, “God can deliver us, but even if he doesn’t, we will not bow and worship you or your gods; we will give praise, even in the fire” (see Daniel 3).
I don’t know what you’re facing, but you can trust God in the fire. He will be with you, guarding you even as the flames still burn, and you find yourself in the midst of it. You can choose to praise him on the right side. You can be free from fear, angst, and anxiety that the trial attempts to produce in your life. When anxiety takes over, it often reveals how quickly we look to ourselves for comfort instead of trusting God as the God of all comfort. So lay your burden upon the Lord—he sees, he cares, he loves, and he is at work! Amen ▉
